Criterion Collection‘s art director Eric Skillman is constantly collecting names.
Skillman is the mastermind behind finding the artists who design or illustrate Criterion Collection’s DVD artwork, and that’s why he has thousands of artists in an archive.
He’s always looking for new artists, but he’s also looking for the perfect match. Speaking with Variety over Zoom, Skillman explains the process of matching artist to project. “I find out the upcoming schedule a month or two before I need to assign. Sometimes I’m scrambling to watch the movies I have seen before we assign.”
Having access to great films allows Skillman to find the best illustrators and artists around the world. Sometimes it’s a simple composition, other times, it’s looking at a scene and distilling that into an illustration. And when possible, it’s a collaboration with the filmmaker.
“It’s who fits this project,” he says. “The films have not gotten repetitive to me yet, they’re still so diverse and interesting and have so many different new things about them that there’s just new people to discover who are the right fit for new projects all the time.”
Skillman speaks with Variety about the process of the cover art coming together, and below he breaks down the ideas behind some Criterion designs and illustrations.
How involved are the studios or filmmakers in the artwork of a Criterion Collection film?
We’re much more engaged with the filmmakers and their preferences than we are with the studios. Per se. Our process engages with the filmmakers directly. If there’s something that they love that was made before, we generally go with their preference. But for the most part, we’re excited to make new things. We think that there’s just a slightly different story to be told about a movie when it’s coming out for the first time, you have to introduce it to a new audience, versus a movie that’s been around for 30 years, or however, long, and people have pre-existing associations.
Where does the art process for Criterion typically begin?
It starts with a conversation, usually between me and our internal producer. Every project has a producer who shepherds the whole project from start to finish, and we talk through what we’re trying to achieve and what and what we want to get across. If there is a living filmmaker, we usually try to schedule a meeting with them to get their input. From there, we usually bring in an outside designer who iterates on some ideas that we present. Their ideas are often better than ours because that’s why you work with great creative people, and then it’s a fairly standard back-and-forth approval process from there, as far as they send sketches and we make notes and get results. The whole thing, from start to finish is about two months, and then we have another month of fine tuning the bells and whistles.
What do you look for in the artist?
it’s very project-specific. It’s either a situation like JoJo dancer, where we had this notion of collage and then it was about finding somebody whose work embodies that. right? On other occasions, it’s about having an existing familiarity with the artist and their work, and being able to say, “I trust you. Let’s figure out together what this is going to be.” I’m constantly just collecting names. Anytime I see anything in the world hat I like, I figure out who made it, and I write it down. I have an archive of a couple 1000 names of people that I just want to find a project for someday.
Below Skillman breaks down the ideas behind four Criterion posters.
“The Grifters” by Drusilla Adeline
“We had a lot of conversations about that yellow, and I don’t think we ever landed on a successful intellectualization of why that yellow worked, but nothing else we tried made sense to us, and that always felt like it had to be there.
“The sunglasses are such an iconic part of the movie, and I think part of the reason it’s iconic is because it was used so strongly in the poster and in that opening scene. But it’s so well established in that opening that they stick with you.
“So we wanted to try to find a fresh way to take it. The original poster is great, but it’s been seen before, and people know what to expect. So, how can you give it something now? And that was the specific choice to isolate the sunglasses and have it be just sunglasses.
“That came from our designer Drusilla who is an amazing collaborator. I had pitched her a couple of different ideas about focusing on those sunglasses, and she was like, “Well, why don’t we just do this?”
‘The Piano’ by Greg Ruth
“Greg Ruth is one of my favorite people to work with; endlessly creative, endlessly collaborative and just a joy to have on any project.
“That particular project was an interesting one. That concept came from something Jane Campion said in an interview. She talked about how the scene that this is drawn from. There’s a just a bit of editing where Holly Hunter as Ada McGrath is walking away, and it cuts to an image of a wooded area, and it cuts back to her. Jane talked about how much of the meaning of the film was tied up in that cut that edit. But that transition from the civilized world to this awakening of her individuality and sexuality was such a great moment.
“So, it’s two images, and we were trying to think about how to make that into one static image. Greg has long done composite drawings that I love tremendously. But he hadn’t really done one of those for us. So, I said, “Greg, can you take that approach and apply it to this scene?” And he got it immediately.”
‘Celine & Julie Go Boating’ by Lauren Tamaki
“That movie is about three and a half hours. It’s a fun watch, but there’s so much in it that you can’t really expect anybody to express all of the plot. What matters is the experience of hanging out with these two women and their friendship and the joy of that.
“Lauren is someone who has that sort of energy in her own life, and is a person who captures joy in her artwork really well. So that was one where we said, “Watch the movie and tell us what you think.” And she gave us 35 drawings. It was amazing to pick and choose, and most of it wound up somewhere in the package because I couldn’t let it go to waste.
“One of my favorite things is when I reach out to a designer with a movie that they haven’t seen before, and then they watch it, and say, “I can’t believe I hadn’t seen that before.” They fall in love with it, and that to me is one of the things to feel like I picked the right person for that.”
‘Jo Jo Dance’ by Matt Smalls
“This particular work is a metal collage. Matt takes pieces of scrap metal. Everything he makes is beautiful and we were able to go to him and say, “Do what you do and make us a portrait of Richard Pryor.” We just had this notion that the film is so fragmentary. It’s about the self-portrait of Richard Pryor. He directed it and co-wrote it and he’s trying to rebuild a sense of self after a fictionalized version of his famous, you know, self-immolation incident. Yhis idea of trying to build a fractured sense of self out of the bits and pieces of your life story really resonated with us, and that just seemed to fit so perfectly with what Matt does in all of his work.
“It required no art direction or feedback beyond that initial connection that we made, and he just made the most beautiful thing.”
